Evangelism for Anglicans
One of the recent additions to the church's Announcements page is a new upcoming class, "Evangelism for Anglicans, or, How to Share Your Faith Without Losing Your Friends." It all grew out of a chance comment Matt made to me one Sunday about evangelism. Several years ago I had chanced across a document online for a course in evangelism for Episcopalians (about a 50-page Word document) and had saved it away, and mentioned it to Matt in the conversation.
He was interested, so I sent a copy to him and to Fr. Daniel. Apparently they studied it, found it fine, and worked on a re-organization for a slightly different class format. The announcement notes that Matt and Fr. Daniel will be conducting the class.
As Fr. Daniel notes, "Many people who ought to be members of our parish are still waiting to be asked! Come and enjoy a detailed course intended to help the shy, the timid, and the tongue-tied develop skills and confidence in sharing their Christian faith with their un-Churched friends." We do live in the least-churched part of the country, and I think we have something beautiful to share.
I think this will be quite interesting!
posted by Continuing Home @ 4:10 PM
2 Comments:
At 2:35 AM,
The Lemonts said…
One thing that continuing anglicans have to avoid during evangelism is talking about the Episcopal Church. When I began exploring Eastern Orthodoxy (and then Anglicanism in the context of the ACA and APCK) I ran into churches that were more about pointing out the faults in men like Griswold than pointing to Jesus. I didn't come from an Episcopal background so all that bashing and talk of Apostasy only confused me rather than help me into the church. Now several years later I understand what the talk was all about but as a seeker or new believer the emphasis on not being like them didn't help us become like Christ.
At 7:36 AM,
Continuing Home said…
You have a VERY good point and one I had forgotten, perhaps because it's not an issue here.
It was only a few years after we joined St. Bartholomew's that the "looking back" ended (this was a couple of decades ago). Even at the time we joined, 24 years ago, there was relatively little such talk. It was hard enough for my wife and I to make the move; if there had been a lot of such talk we might not have joined.
Since then the former Episcopalians in our midst have become a small minority, and it's not an element of our identity at all. Any talk at all of TEC is extremely rare, and even then only among those who were in ECUSA.
It's reached the point where recently I learned that a member of our *Vestry* did not know our church had been founded by some folks who'd left ECUSA. Perhaps we've been a bit remiss about passing on our history.
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